The Death of Journalism? - Part 2

Last week, I talked about the changes forced on the profession of journalism. I focused on the “external” factors of limited time, limited staff, and the 24-hour news cycle.

Now it’s time to take a hard look at the journalists, themselves. When I worked in TV news, as a film and video editor and producer, one of the high expectations placed on journalists was objectivity. I learned, however, that there really is no such thing. No human being can be truly unbiased. When you work in a place – and a profession – where most of your peers hold the same world view, subjectivity becomes invisible. In other words, when everyone wears the same “rose-colored glasses,” opinion and truth can become synonyms.

Don’t get me wrong: a good journalist works to overcome this bias - if he or she is aware of it. The expansion of electronic news sources over the past few decades has not heralded an increase of objectivity. Instead, news outlets representing one political stripe crop up to counteract the biases that they see in other news organizations. Fox News is a classic example, created to offset the liberal views of the “mainstream media.” TV news viewers can pick the news that makes them feel good; to support their own biases, rather than to be informed. Like many conservatives, I don’t consider Fox News “fair and balanced.” Rather, I see and hear news that is presented from a conservative perspective. As Jeff Sorensen says in his Huffpost Detroit blog, “Confirmation bias blinds people to the bias because it supports their point of view.” It’s nice if you want to say “See, I told you!” But that is not helpful if you want to be an informed citizen or carry on a reasoned debate.

At one time, internalized standards like honesty and integrity were among the values for which journalists strove. Of course, some still do. But the temptations and the pressures of time and money make it very difficult. Our culture, having become unmoored from commonly-held Judeo-Christian values, has a difficult time expecting or enforcing those standards. Consequently, journalism, as a calling, is endangered - if it isn’t dead already.